Book Review: Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli (2011)

Like Valeria, I stare at the faces in the crowd; the crowd of short paragraphs hurrying across the surface of this book, intermingling with the innate desire to escape the mound without any considerable collision.

Like each paragraph, I anoint a barren, precise tone; a tone synthesizing topical fervor and ornate truants, rendering authenticity to a near magical premise.

Like the topical fervor, I vacillate between two worlds; the fact that I am fictionalizing and the fiction that I am factualizing.

Like the fact-fiction saga, I appreciate the person and the reflection; akin to the writer protagonist conjuring a fake poet to secure success, if only at a sedate cost, without keeping the poet’s own whim under chains.

Like the poet’s whim, I breathe across a layer; a layer dividing the two worlds, consisting of acute observation, dissolving identities, moribund spirit and uninvited realizations.

Like the two worlds, I immerse in syntactical mess; the life of the protagonist and her derived muse that by intent, should have merged into a delightful soft mousse, actually emerging as a marginally hard, gooey concoction.

Like the concoction, I expand to add mass; the substantial mass of innovative plotline and formidable modern-day literature references that is rapidly bulking the novel’s consistency against a mildly incongruous story-telling.

Like the story-telling, I disintegrate to trough again; troughs that outnumbered crests, turning the whole reading expedition like a tarmac witnessing more departures than arrivals.

Like the few arrivals, I keep flashing on board; the board which bears Valeria’s name too, and against which, there flickers a few reading flights that I wish will arrive for me one day.